Almost half of the used hard drives purchased on eBay by computer forensics company Kessler International were found to contain easily recoverable personal data.
“The average person who knows anything about computers could plug in these disks and just go surfing,” Kessler said. “I know they found a guy’s foot fetish on one disk. He’d been downloading loads and loads of stuff on feet. With what we got on that disk — his name, address and all of his contacts — it would have been extremely embarrassing if we were somebody who wanted to blackmail him.”
But of course it’s not just embarrassing information that can be found but also crucial data such as passwords and banking information.
Fortunately Lifehacker has a comprehensive guide to erasing all that data.
Plus if you want to be doubly sure that nobody can recover the data from your old hard drive then hwy not dispose of it with extreme prejudice.
